


After Vectron

by sbuggbot



Category: SteamWorld Dig (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Robo Whump, Spoilers for Dig 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 21:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21022214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbuggbot/pseuds/sbuggbot
Summary: Somehow, Dorothy managed to survive whatever happened down in the depths of Vectron. Now she's got to make it back up and recover...Takes place partway through Dig 2





	1. Ow

**Author's Note:**

> It's been too dang long since I've written a Dig fic. My mind just fixiates on whatever SteamWorld game is newest, I guess.
> 
> Thanks to Sei_Bellisima for writing her epic fic, the latest chapter of which spurred me to write this thingy out.

Her whole body hurt.

That was the first thing Dorothy thought when she came to. How in the world was she still in one piece? No steambot should feel this much pain while not missing any big parts, she thought. She didn’t want to move right away out of fear that one of her limbs would flat-out fall off once disturbed. 

She peeked out from over her arm and looked around. It was dim and her optics refused to focus correctly, but it was enough for the moment. It felt cooler than what she normally expected underground, but a quick survey revealed that she was in Archaea once again, just a weird part of it. She let out a sigh that wound up catching in her chest and rattling. Confused, Dorothy pushed herself up a little (ow) and coughed out water (also ow). That’d explain it: an overactive boiler splashing contents back up her throat. She wasn’t surprised by this in the slightest. The fact she’d been laying on the ground probably didn’t help.

To be honest, she could still feel the fear and panic in her body, actually. No wonder she hurt so bad; Dorothy had run harder than ever before and pushed her body to its absolute limits earlier in order to not be violently killed. 

Dorothy rolled away from the spat-up puddle and flopped back onto the floor. (ow.) She might actually die right here if she didn’t try to get help. No one would know she was down here--

_ Fen. _

Where were they? Dorothy obviously wasn’t in the same place she had entered Vectron, but that was all she knew. Was Fen right where she had left them? Did they wander off after teleporting her? Had something worse happen to them?

She had to find them; she couldn’t die alone in the depths of the mines. Looking up, though, revealed that the only way out was a heck of a climb, one she did not have the energy to make. Was there another tunnel lower down…?

No, but there was an upgrade machine, one she didn’t remember. Investigating it wouldn’t hurt, especially since her only other option was to lay on the ground indefinitely. Gingerly, Dorothy got onto her feet (ow again) and made her way over to the upgrade machine (ow ow ow).

Despite being in a part of the mine that had not been explored in ages, the machine did not, in fact, malfunction and kill her on the spot. She emerged from it and found that she had been given a jetpack, one that didn’t run off steam from what she could tell. Unfortunately, the machine’s maintenance function hadn’t fired off all the way, so Dorothy’s body was still strained and hurting. (But not at risk of falling apart at least!)

Dorothy was still tired and not thinking the clearest, but the jetpack’s controls were basically idiot-proof. She just had to be mindful and make sure it didn’t overheat and cut out on her while in midair. Worst comes to worst, she could hook onto a wall and wait for the thing to cool off.

Now that she had the means to escape, Dorothy wasted little time in doing so. As she figured, the trip up was easier when she could fly. (She also found that some of the walls were covered in that dumb paneling she couldn’t get a grip on; meaning that climbing out was impossible anyway.)

The cave she was in was the same one she had entered Vectron in, she found. Right there was the teleporter Fen had activated, just as it had been when she left. Where was Fen, though?

“Fen?” She called out.

No answer.

She stepped closer. “FEN?!” Dorothy yelled, panic creeping across her chest and into her voice.

A buzzing hum and the screen on the teleporter started glowing. “Fen? I am Fen…” Then, Fen popped out. “Dorothy? You ma--” They looked over at her and stopped in the middle of their sentence. “You look like scrap, are you okay?”

Dorothy didn’t have the drive to answer one way or the other. Leaning against the wall, she sighed and let her shoulders and pigtails droop.

Anything that happened to be on Fen’s mind at the moment was completely pushed aside in light of how rough she looked right now. “You made it out,” they said.

“I don’t know how, but I did…” She straightened back up. “I promised I’d come back for you, remember?”

“Yeah…” they trailed off thoughtfully. “We should get back to town now.”

Even if Dorothy didn’t agree, she had no room to argue with Fen over it. Slowly, Dorothy made her way out of the wretched cave and back into the main mine. Slowly, though. So slowly that it prompted a concerned comment from Fen.

“I...I’m real tired and I don’t feel right,” Dorothy admitted. “I think I can make it back to town, though.”

Fen opted to linger around near Dorothy instead of inside her furnace, just in case. The sprite being out and about gave off a different sort of presence compared to being inside Dorothy’s furnace, one that she rather appreciated at the moment.

Once she made it back into the main part of the mines, she asked Fen where the tube was. Fen went off to the side and towards the edge. “Down this way…”

Dorothy shuffled over and looked over the edge. “Water pool,” she observed. “Good enough for me,” she said, hopping off the little cliff. She landed right in the pool, as she expected, which absorbed any shock from landing, as she also expected. Fen still seemed anxious about her action, which was really strange considering the fact that they had tried to entice her off a cliff not ten minutes after meeting her, and repeatedly cheered for destruction since then.

Before hoisting herself out of the water, Dorothy put her arms on the pool ledge and rested for a moment. Or three. She didn’t dare stay for too long, however--she wouldn’t have been able to get back out if she did.

As she approached the pneumatic tube, Fen went back into her furnace for safe traveling. The tube system didn’t react to their semi-corporeal form and it was faster to ride with Dorothy. Not even having to think about it, she set the destination to El Machino and flipped on the tube.

For some inexplicable reason, the pressure change while the tube ran really messed with her. Combined with how tired she was to begin with, this led to Dorothy collapsing the moment she stepped out of the tube. The noise alone was enough to get everyone’s attention in the area. If not that, then the way Fen emerged and shouted for her.

Shuddering and coughing up water once again, Dorothy became unable to process what was going on around her. Sounds like Ma Yonker rolling closer to her and voices faded and blurred out.


	2. Hmph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You cannot keep going full steam indefinitely. You're going to eventually crash...

When Dorothy woke up, things didn't hurt nearly as much. She found herself in some unfamiliar bed (probably an inn or something, she guessed). Fen was settled on the bed near her pillow, dutifully guarding her. She stretched her somewhat stiff limbs out, the quiet noise of her mechanics working catching Fen's attention. 

The little sprite looked back at her, their eyes widened, and immediately they began nuzzling her cheek. It was oddly affectionate coming from them, but Dorothy didn't complain. She returned the gesture with some small pets.

She heard a rattling noise. Looking over, she saw Turtle Bucket on the other side of the room, deeply engrossed in investigating her new jetpack. "Um…"

He was startled enough to almost drop it before realizing that dropping the jetpack might break it. "Auugh! I'm-I'm sorry, I should have asked, I just…" Turtle held it up. "I thought I'd never see one. I thought that station was lost for good!"

"Yeah?" Dorothy said, managing a little smile. "It is really cool, I don't think any mechanic could pass up the chance to poke at it."

"You're not mad at me, then?" he asked, still nervous.

"'Course not, I totally get it." It was close enough to current steam technology that her father would have been fascinated by it--without being unnerved like with some of the Vectron technology Rusty started bringing up. “I think even someone who wasn’t a total gearhead would find it neat.”

"Neat? More than neat! It's a diesel engine, so it doesn't need to use your water tank to work like your other tools. It has its own fuel supply. The only issue is that it overheats, but I think that enough tinkering could help with that or even fix it." He paused. "Oh, I'm boring you, aren't I…?"

Dorothy covered Fen up with her hand before they could say something rude. "Absolutely not, I didn't get a good look at it earlier." Besides, it didn't hurt anything to let Turtle gush over something he was interested in for a little while. "I had a rough time down there."

"I-I wondered, with the way you collapsed…"

"That really old lady said she hadn't seen anything like that in years," Fen said.

"The mayor's mother," Turtle elaborated. Everyone in El Machino knew Ma Yonker, whether they wanted to or not. Even visitors.

"Cog's sake, how did that even happen," she muttered. "I've never heard of the tube system making someone pass out, even if they were hurt."

"Um, between the amount of strain your system's been under lately, and uh… some incomplete repairs, you kinda just collapsed…" He fidgeted. "S-Something about the pressure change in the tube made you, um, malfunction. I think…"

Dorothy let herself flop back with a tired grunt. She shouldn't and was not surprised. Even with all the minor repairs she had given herself here and there, she'd been too busy lately to properly take care of herself.

"You were really tired, too…" Fen added.

"So I've been totally out the past couple hours?"

"Not totally out, there was one point while Bucket was fixing you where you woke up part of the way. You were really confused and said something obscene to Yonker that she said I can't repeat."

Dorothy grimaced. Now that Fen had mentioned it, she vaguely remembered the incident, even though literally nothing had made sense at the time aside from the fact that she was in pain and people were messing with her. Hopefully, Ma wasn't mad, if Dorothy actually said what she thought she did out loud...

"She thought it was funny," Fen added. "You were really mad when Turtle Bucket gave you a descaler." They didn't really understand what it did exactly, but evidently Dorothy had mineral deposits in her boiler and some of them were messing with the valves? Whatever that meant; Fen was a little sprite, not a robot.

"I'm not surprised, that stuff tastes horrible!" Not to mention the fact Dorothy was uncooperative taking any sort of medicine even when she was actually coherent. “Where did my bag go? I better not have left it down there…”

“It’s over here, but…” he trailed off. It took Dorothy giving him an intent look to get Turtle Bucket to continue. “ _ Technically _ , you’re good to go back down, but, um…” And then his nerves got the better of him and he found himself unable to talk.

“I just wanted my canteen,” she said. It was firmly hooked to the side of her bag where it wouldn't come off by accident. There was a brief moment where the repairbot seemed to forget what the word canteen meant and panicked even more. He managed to catch his brain as it fled in fear, though and passed it over to her.

That was enough for Turtle Bucket to find his words again. “You’ve, uh, been working really hard lately, and… you might want to rest some. Um, or at least more often,” he added quickly at the end.

"I can rest when I find Rusty," she said with a note of finality, screwing the cap back on her canteen. As she did so, something dawned on her. You could see it in the way she stopped moving and her face went blank. She hadn't found a single clue towards finding Rusty down there. 

She had gone down to Vectron and almost died for  _ nothing _ .

Dorothy wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or scream. Maybe both. Any time she wasn't on the trail to finding Rusty was time for him to go elsewhere and for potential leads to expire. And between going down there, crawling her way back up, and malfunctioning, she had wasted a  _ lot _ of time. She hissed a particularly harsh swear that startled Turtle Bucket into dropping the tool he was holding.

"Uhm…"

She buried her face in her hands. "I didn't even find anything down there about him," she groaned. "It was a dead end and I don't know where to look next."

There was a heavy, awkward pause where no one knew what to say.

"DOROTHY!" Fen suddenly screeched, scaring everyone in the room. "I-I fell asleep while you were down there, and I had a dream, something about the flow of power--I saw--" They got too excited to form actual words and made an excited buzzing noise.

"What? What did you see?" Dorothy was matching Fen's enthusiasm now.

"I saw--no, I felt more devices! Ones like the one Rusty made."

"If Rusty's been there, there might be clues!" With renewed energy and determination, Dorothy leaped to her feet. "Let's go tell Rosie!"

Before Turtle Bucket could say anything, Dorothy had grabbed her bags and gone out the door with a spark of hope burning brightly once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...but you can pick yourself back up eventually.


End file.
